Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

Submitted Tales From Technical Support

Tales From Technical Support Content

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for internal IT suport, got a call from one of our users who's just bought himself a home PC, (we don't support home users but we try to be helpful). He's unpacked it and is running through the installation instructions.

He's got to step 6 "Please connect USB devices", knowing that he's previously mentionned connecting his printer but hasn't connected his scannner yet I'm wondering if the new scanner is USB, I've asked him to describe the connection on the scanner (if it's big then parallel, small then USB).

The reply I received was "3pin 13 amp" (or mains plug to our non UK readers).

Don't know why I keep on wasting my time!

How not to describe a pc
Posted 03/01/2000 by Tom
 

It is just one of those days:

caller: I cannot access my computer because it is locked by the previous user.

Me: well, no problem just give me the number of the pc so I can access it remotely and log the other person off and you can log on again.

caller gives me the number but it turns out to be the number of the monitor.

me: Ok, that number is not your pc. There should be another number on the pc itself.

caller: no there isn't

me: There should be, are you looking at the box below your screen.

caller: Yes I am

me: this is the box in which you can put a disk, right?

caller: Yes

me: then there should be a number on it

caller (getting desperate, almost crying): no there really isn't.

me: Ok then just turn your computer of and on that should do the trick aswell.

Caller: ok, how do I do that?

Me: just press the button on the right.

caller: there is no button

me(getting desperate, almost crying): there should be a button just above the light.

caller: there is no light. Can you PLEASE sent somebody around.

Me(getting anxious to get rid of this person) ok I'll send somebody around.

I contact my colleagues of 2nd tier and 2 of them run down to see what is going on.

5 minutes later they return laughing there heads of. Turns out that she did indeed have a box under her monitor in which she can put disks but this is one of these large 3 drawer disk boxes, her actual pc was under her desk.

I should ofcourse have known better then to describe a pc as a box in which you put your disk. But hey, how else can you describe it to a total nitwit.

IFORGET is the password
Posted 03/01/2000 by Steve Davis
 

So this doofus calls and says he can't log into the network AGAIN.

I had just changed his password last week to "IFORGET".

We've used this password with other dimwits in the past

and they seem to be able to remember it. When trying to jar

their memory they stumble accross it themselves, "I forget my pssword,

OH YEAH THAT'S IT - "IFORGET" ".

ME: Well it looks like you've entered the wrong password

again "Chuck". Did you use you special password "IFORGET"?

HE: Yeah, I typed in "IFORGOT" (notice GOT not GET) and I get

nowhere's.

ME: Now "Chuck" your password is "IFORGET" (ephasizing "GET")

HE: (getting pissed) YEAH, I TYPE IN "IFORGOT" TWICE AND CAN'T

GET IN, SOMETHINGS WRONG WITH THE G*DAMN NETWORK!!

ME: "Chuck" your password is "IFORGET" NOT "IFORGOT"

HE: LIKE I SAID (practically screaming) I TYPE IN "IFORGOT"

JUST LIKE YOU SAID AND . . . .

ME: (interupting) CHUCK, listen to me man the work is "iforGET"

NOT "iforGOT".

HE: I DID USE . . . .oh . . . OK now I'm in now, thanks, (click)

I keep resisting the urge to change their password to "IAMSTUPID".

Telecommunting
Posted 03/01/2000 by Cynthia D
 

"thank you for calling the remote PC help desk how may I help you?"

"I am at the office and I want to download some Files from My home PC. Can I have my IP Address at home please?"

"Ok Sir I do not have your IP Address at home."

"Yes you do, your the one who set it up!"

"No sir I am not in the same state as you are, Im in Dallas, your in California"

"Well then you should have my IP address on Record"

"No Sir I dont have it on record, we do not keep your IP address on file"

"Well then how do I get my IP address?"

"Sir you will have to call your ISP"

"No I need to call you, you have it on file"

"Sir we dont keep home IP addresses on file, when you get home you can run IP Config and write down your IP address and bring it into the office tommorow"

"But I need those files today!"

"The only other thing you can do is drive home and do it today"

"Never mind Ill just call back!"

User hung up.

modem doesn't connect
Posted 03/01/2000 by amy
 

One day i received an electronic service call for a user on another coast. the problem was "modem doesn't connect" there was no other information. i placed the hardware service call with XXX and waited. a week later i called XXX to find out what was taking so long. i was informed that the laptop was on billable hold because it came in to the repair center cracked and held together with duct tape. DUCT TAPE! i authorized the repair. (the laptop is leased from XXX and must be repaired according to the contract.) a week later, i called again to find out what was taking so long. i was informed that even though practically everything in the laptop had been replaced, the modem still wasn't connecting. the only thing XXX could come up with was that it was a software problem and the hard drive should be re-imaged. i requested that the laptop be sent to me for the software wipe and load. when i received the laptop - one week later - i powered it up and was greeted with another company's logo! XXX had taken the harddrive out to run diagnostics and replaced it with a different hard drive. needless to say the user was double pissed, one because he was caught for the damage and two because he lost all his data. it was a user and service provider nightmare.

Computers and cholesterol!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Allestra
 

This one happened to a friend of mine who does support for a very large computer corporation which shall remain anonymous, but has pretty much swallowed the city of Houston, Texas.

One night a few weeks ago, he received a call from a gentleman who, after refusing to give his name/serial number/any important information, had one astonishing question:

"Is sausage bad for printers???"

My friend was so shocked, he simply answered "Yes."

There was a long silence and the man hung up after shouting an expletive. No further information!

My friend says now that had he been thinking more clearly, he would have asked the man the following questions:

"Link or patty?"

"All beef, pork or turkey?"

And, last but not least:

"What was your printer's cholesterol level prior to consuming the sausage?"

Good salesman
Posted 03/01/2000 by Blade Runner
 

Hi, I work for an ISP, I heard this from another tech:

A client had a problem, when she want to start the internet explorer, Windows 95 gave her the message : cannot load all the library needed to open your application....

The place where she has gone, sold her a new motherboard, a CPU, a Windows 98 cdrom and another video card.

That's what can appen when they want to take advantage in the fact that you dont know how it works ;o)

A Drink Anyone?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Mike C
 

Supporting users can be a chore as I am sure you all know. A few days ago I received a call from one of our users, she claimed her keyboard was not working anymore. I told her I would be right over and hung up. When I got to her desk I asked her if anything had happened to it? No she said, I came in this morning and it wouldn't work. I checked to make sure it was connected to the PC and it was. I pressed a few keys and noticed they were a bit sticky. Hmmm. Did you spill anything on the keyboard?, I asked her. No she replied. I lifted the keyboard up and some soda ran out. Whats this I asked? Oh yeah I forgot I did spill some soda in it yesterday, do you think that's the problem. Could be I said and gave her a new keyboard.

If only this were a real error message and other interesting tales
Posted 03/01/2000 by Nick
 

When I was in my highschool programming class for my last year, the class before us (grade 9 typing if i remeber correctly) would always leave the lab a mess. Things like disks left in drives, garbage left everywhere, not logging out and other such things. This was a bother to our teacher, because he would have to clean the labs afterwards, and the teacher of the class before us did not seem to care. One day we decide to play a joke on them, so we wrote a simple program that would come up after login and say "error, the current user is too stupid to be using this computer. Replace user and hit any key to continue. Error code 1D10T" The program was set up so that if you hit the right ket (F3 i believe), it would let you through. Any other key and it would clear the screen and repeat the message. A few of the students in our class (myself included) had spares during their class and came up at this point to say they were working on a project and could they use a few of the computers since the class did not use them all. THe teacher was very flustered at this point at this point and could we please help. We quickly went around to all the machines and pressed the passthrough key, and lo and behold, we got in. After we managed to keep a stright face through explaining to the other teacher that this was part of some new software for our class (a compiler i believe), and not to worry it only checked intelligence on login, and we were going to try and get ahold of the company and see if there was any way to disable the feature. We then walked out iunto the hall and promptly collapsed in heaps of laughter. This went on for two weeks before we finally got bored and removed the program.

Same teacher: when i was taking grade 10 comp sci, this typing teacher (who was supposed to be a programmer) was instructing. I was slow saving my work one day and class was over. He was hounding me to hurry up, but I wanted to finish the one peice of code I was working on, before I left. He threatened to turn my computer off if I did not leave immediately. Just a sec. Too late. He walked over and switched it off. As soon as his back was turned, I turned the monitor back on, saved my work, logged out and left.

Same idiot: At one point my friend had finished his work and was starting to get bored. He then rebooted and went into the bios, just to see what the comps had in them. At this point the teacher walked by and "what are you doing?" "Oh, i'm just playing a quick game of SimBIOS since my work is finished." "Did you install that?, you know you cant put games on these machines." "No, comes with the computer." "well, get out of the game and delete it!"

It was a tempting offer, but we didn't have a screwdriver handy.

I recently went back and spoke to a few friends that still go to this school. This teacher still teaches advanced programming, and still thinks you can thumbnail images in HTML with the height and witdh tags.

Word Autocorrect.
Posted 03/01/2000 by Rob
 

A few years ago I was tech support for a retail company

head office. One of the management chaps used to tie up

my PC only email-capable PC for hours while he wrote his

email in Word, saved it to the desktop, and then sent it

to everybody in the company as an email attachment.

It wouldn't have been so bad if it was work related, but he

decided that he would try to 'brighten everyones day' by

writing a 'weekly newsletter' full of really bad jokes,

pointless facts and a regular run-down on what kind of

week he'd had... Everyone in the company that I knew of was

getting sick to death of it...but he was management, and

that was that.

I noticed that he was always writing about his new car, and

this itself had become a bit of a laughing point. I set up

a macro in Word that, when he saved his file to the desktop

changed all occurances of the word "CAR" to "DONKEY", saved

the file, and then changed them all back again so that he

wouldn't spot a problem if he did a quick visual spellcheck.

His last ever mass-email, distributed to about 850 people,

detailed how he had problems with his new donkey, as it

was shaking terribly when he got it up to 50mph on the

motorway, and ever since he had started it on unleaded

petrol it quite often died when he let it idle while

stationary at traffic lights.

Apparently HIS manager read the thing and decided to put a

stop to his (and I quote) "tomfoolery". :-)

Where am I at?
Posted 03/01/2000 by C. Smith
 

I work tech support for a major oem. I've always said that

there are certain people that shouldn't be allowed to own

anthing more advanced than a pencil. I am now certain of that.

I gave my usual introduction one day, during which I always ask for

an email address. The caller gave me the first half and stopped

before the @. I asked him where his email was at and he responded

"At my house."

Not long after I asked another caller for his name.

The response: "That could be difficult."

There outa be a law about that.

Start Menu Blues
Posted 03/01/2000 by James Kastrantas
 

The school had just set up a LAN and electronic gradebooks, and I was in class doing a writing assignment. The teacher calls me up to her desk and says,"I'd like to ask you something. I accidently clicked the Start Button and I don't know how to get rid of it." I showed her what to do and she thanked me. I walked back to my desk wondering how she even started the program in the first place.

im so dumb
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

Me:Thank you for calling XXXXXXXXX.XXX how can i help You?

Cs:My name is Bubba

Me:How can help you Bubba

Cs:Well sir I am the dumbest guy youll ever talk to

Me:Ummm ok what the problem

CS:wich side do u put in

Me:Side of what sir

Cs:well i have this thingy one sides is shinney and the outher side is gold.

Me:you meen the cd?

Cs:I dont know.

Me:Well sir its the gold side should be up)

Cs:uh ok thank i think

The right idea, but...
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I was helping a customer to install ie from the cdrom she had just picked up from the local office. When I told her to put the cdrom in, there was a long pause.

After a while : "I just cant figure out where to put it.".

I replied : "Put it in your cdrom drive."

Customer : "My what?..."

Me : "Do you have a cdrom drive on your computer?"

Customer : (pause, as a light dawns...)

"My computer has a country'n'western music player. Shoudld I put it in there?"

Get rid of S-E-X !
Posted 03/01/2000 by Hugo
 

I do tech-support for my father and a couple of his friends

as support in Argentina is REALLY expensive, yesterday

I get a call from one saying his computer doesn't work. I go

over there and find that among other things, most of Excel

has been erased, as well as many extension associations.

After repeatedly asking him what he did, he finally broke

down. It seems his 14 year old son was surfing the web for

porn and put lots of the sites in favorites (goes to show

how important profiles are in W98), when he saw them he

wanted to get rid of it all. So in is rudimentary

knowledge, he did a search for "*sex*.*" and erased everything

that came up. Not content with that, he somehoww got into

regedit and searched for "sex" and erased everything else.

Final analisys, reinstall Windows and Office and many other

programs that have sex :)

Going Going Gone
Posted 03/01/2000 by Phil G
 

I work for a large ISP, one night I was assisting a member with his browser. During the call he exclaimed that a configure file was missing. I said that is the file we are working with. I had him search for this file and during the search he yelled, "My desktop icons are gone!". I asked him to press the start button in which he barked that it was empty. He was aked to reboot his system and instead if a desk top he recieved this message of doom: "Enter the name of the command Interpertor"......A virus claims another poor unsuspecting PC. The cool thing is he laughed about it...Maybe he cried after we ended the call. I took a deserved break.

Strange sound
Posted 03/01/2000 by John Michael
 

*2 weeks prior to this call the Woman installed 64 megs of Ram in her system*

A lady called tech support wanted to complain that the software she installed from our ISP gave her a Virus and was making her computer make noises and was consistantly disconnecting her from the internet.

At this point I "HEARD" the sound, it sounded like a growl. Then the lady said she was disconnected from the internet. I asked her to reconnect to the internet, she then said to me......MODEM NOT FOUND!!

Then she said there was a burning smell comming from her computer, I said to the Lady to please UNPLUG her computer fromt he power source, she then Moved her computer back only to discover that there was a 13 lb Cat that was very irritated that the CPU fan was trying eat its whiskers and was making the growl sound that the lady said was a virus that our ISP software installed in her computer and that the CAT had made a Home ina warm place and shorted out the modem, motherboard.......and chewed the phone line.

Thank you for calling techincal support, how may I help you?

System Security????
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

This dates back to '74, when I was a Computer Science student in high school, working on dial-up terminals. I was doing some independent study work so I had access to the lab room early in the morning, with one of the computer proctors. On this morning, it was the start of a new semester and the new computer classes were starting.

I came in and the proctor was already there. Having noticed something on the way in, I logged in to the Fortran class account (just to see if I was right about what I had seen). The proctor took me aside and asked me how I knew the password. So I walked him a few feet farther.He walked me down to the Computer teacher. She asked me to show her. So I walked her down the hall and said:

"Next time you post the password, put it on the side of the board away from the window in the door".

She gave me a key and made me one of the lab proctors.

ISSUES
Posted 03/01/2000 by tom zampetti
 

I work at the helpdesk for an acounting firm in jersey. I dont know how some people here even got a job here. a user was expirencing problems with an application so i was walking her through the fix. I asked the user to get to her desktop. I heard a loud banging noises and she said "im at my desktop".This user moved everything off her desk!!!!! some people have some serious issuses!!!! GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU TECHS, I KNOW YOU WANT TO TELL THE USERS WHAT YOU REALLY THINK!!!!!!!!!

Porn on the PC
Posted 03/01/2000 by Sean McKissack
 

This has probably happened before to others, but, here we go: I work for an ISP service and recieved a phone call from a customer who was mad about something on her PC.

I asked her what the situation was.

She responded that everytime she typed a website into the address bar, another site would appear below it that had porn on it.

She insisted that WE caused it.

I assured her that the sites appearing below occur if AND ONLY IF IE has been to that site before.

She replied with an "okaay..."

I would've liked to hear WHO got the beating after she hung up the phone: her husband or her kids?

Modems are for everything!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I do tech support for a large internet company, helping people get online. Some pretty odd calls come in, this being one I had to laugh at.

A lady calls in, wandering why she can't setup our service. We use a pretty automated account creater in Netscape, all self explanitory.

Myself: This is blah blah blah, can I get your BTN?

Customer: Yeah, my number is xxx-xxx-xxxx

M: OK, so what's the prob?

C: I cant find my monitor in the account setup, what's wrong?

M: You mean modem?

C: Oh, yeah, that's it.

M: Do you know what kind of modem you have?

C: Yeah, and Intel Pentium something or other.

M: Uhm, ok. Have you tried to connect to our registration server?

C: No, I cant find my modem, but I registered my computer online yesterday!

By now I'm kinda baffled, but keep going.

C: And I know my modem's not broken, my CDROM drive works fine, I just watched a DVD, and I can play games.

M: Where can't you find your modem

C: In the account setup (it was there, she was trying to setup a new modem, which was un-needed)

She ran back and forth from the 'computer room' to the phone, trying to get thru the reg w/ me. It seemed everything was working fine, but she just couldn't find that Intel Pentium modem anywhere in the modem installation! I'd like to get one of those special modems, maybe their faster!

Can you hear me?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Rickenbacker
 

This was while working for a large ISP

in Sweden, back in 1998.

Me: **** * Internet Support, how can I help you?

Customer: (barely audible over horrible hissing

and popping noises) Yes, hello, I just can't seem

to connect to you guys.

M: Hmm, is this the phone line you're using to connect?

C: Yes.

M: Ahhh, problem solved. Please call your phone company

and tell them to fix that cable.

Copier vs. Degauss
Posted 03/01/2000 by John Gaines
 

Thought I would share this tale with you - It had me baffled for a bit. Pulled from my brain archive of 1995-1996.

I received a phone call from one of our loyal customers concerning a problem with a monitor.

Customer: Hey John, This is Tim - hows it goin?

Me: Fine. and you?

Tim: Its okay here. The reason I called is about a problem we are having with a monitor out here at the tool shop. It sometimes flashes, the screen shrinks, and then comes back to normal.

Me: Well Tim, has anything changed with the computer? Did you install a different video card? Possibly a new program that is acting up? Anything you can tell me would help.

Tim: No, nothing new or different. It will just sometimes flash, shrink, and return back to normal. Can you come and take a look?

Me: (look up Tim's account and find that he has purchased on-site warranty) Yeah Tim, I can come on out within the hour. Does it do it all the time? Will I be able to see the problem you describe?

Tim: Maybe, it happens intermittently but, it seems to be more often and increasing. Sometimes it will do it for several minutes straight, then just stop.

Me: (thinking that I might have to replace the monitor, I check stock so I can carry another one with me) Okay Tim, I will be on the road shortly. We'll take care of you.

Me: (Arrive on site and start my evaluation. Nothing is happeing.) I ask Tim if it happens in any certain program.

Tim: No, just does it sometimes ... THERE, there it goes.

Me: (Sure enough, it is flashing, shrinking, and returning to normal. I recognize the monitor is acting as if someone is pressing the DEGAUSS feature on the monitor, but no one has touched it. I replace the monitor with the new one I had brought along.) There you go Tim, that should fix it. Just at that moment, the new monitor starts doing the same thing. Now I am thinking that something is wrong with the computer. I get my tool kit and remove the cover. I inspect everything, All Okay. I am baffled. The monitor is still doing its trick every once in awhile with no apparent pattern. I am really getting frustrated at this point and talking with Tim about taking the complete system back to the shop for diagnostics. I notice that Tim's desk has been moved across the room since my last visit. I ask him how long ago they had moved the system and did the problem occur after moving his desk or was it happening before moving his desk.

Tim: No, no problem before moving the desk.

Me: I unplug the system and take it to the other side of the room and use the electrical outlet over there. After about 10 minutes, the same problem happens. Now, I am feeling pretty convinced that it is the computer system.

READ ON !!

Tim: Hey, want to see the new stuff in the shop?

Me: SURE! (They do some pretty cool stuff with their machining) As we are returning from the tour, I notice a brand new BIGGGG Canon copier (looked like it could hold 5 reams of paper easy, large paper, collate, all types of gizmos and attachments - BIG, STATE OF THE ART) on the wall outside Tim's office. I walked over to look at it. Someone comes up to make a copy and there is a CERTAIN HUM, that I recognize, coming from the copier. Everytime the monitor would screw up, I would hear that hum. I just now figured that out.

Suffice it to say - Everytime someone would use the copier, it would activate the degauss circuit on the monitor. If they made 20 copies, Tim's monitor would flash and degauss 20 times. They originally had the copier on another side of the shop, but when they ordered and setup this BIGGG BEAUTY, they had to put it on Tim's wall because that was the best place it would fit.

Fix for problem: I left Tim with his original monitor and I took the new one back (Tim was disappointed). Tim had another ISOLATED circuit installed in his office to power his computer and monitor.

Info Learned - The customers enviroment can have alot to do with problems they are experiencing. Sometimes you will just have to see the situation before you can learn the problem. I have since seen this same problem with an air conditioning unit on the same electrical circuit as a computer.

Hope you enjoyed my Flash from the Past.

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Rickenbacker
 

While I was working customer service for a really, really

large software company (no names mentioned, but it starts

with Micr and ends with oft) I got quite a few "interesting"

calls, including one customer who wanted to sell antique radio

sets to Big Bill. Anyway, here's one I like :-).

Me: Welcome to M*******t customer service, how can I help you?

Customer: I'd like to have the internet sent to me.

M: You would like to what?

C: My local computer dealer told me that you could send me

the internet on CD, so I'd like to place an order.

(At this point I had figured out that the customer wanted

a CD with Explorer 4.01, which we sent out for free, since

4.00 was essentially one big bug, but I couldn't resist)

M: OK sir, how wide is your front door?

C: My front door?

M: Yes, will it take a standard size cargo pallet?

C: Why?

M: Because the entire internet on CD would probably take up

several of those.

The customer never did get the joke, but my colleagues did.

I just switched back to "helpfulness personified" mode and

sent the CD.

Here's another one, not all that funny, but _very_ cute:

C (obviously a little kid): Hi, can you connect two of your

mice to one computer?

M: Well, I suppose you could... why do you want to do that?

C: Because then me and my dad could play Warcraft at the

same time.

Awww.....

3 stories from Sweden
Posted 03/01/2000 by Glenn
 

Back in 1997 i worked for this small company as a tech, but sometimes we had to do support as well...(i hated it)

C = Customer

M = me

H = Coworker

I = Interm

1) Under dimensioned print server.

Sitting in for the ordinary support guy, i got the following call:

M: xx support, how can i help?

C: I have a problem - I cannot print.

M: Well, have you checked the print manager?

C: The what?

M: The print manager (Told what it was)

C: Ahh... Hey there are 1000+ print jobs here.

M: Ok, if you push the "Play" button it should resume printing.

C: No.. it won't.

...After a little while i understood that the "Print server" was a someones Win 3.11 machine with 250MB harddrive, it had a whole 5 MB space dedicated for print jobs - Great!

2) BDU problem

Me and another tech was talking to a customer about the possible reasons why the system didn't work. We went through everything; Nics, Hubs, protocols...

H: "Well - It could be a BDU problem.."

M: "What's a BDU?"

H: Well, rather complicated, i'll tell you later.

and we told the customer that we would get to the bottom

of this problem..

I laughed my butt off when i got the explaination:

BDU = Brain Dead User.

Every time when he said BDU, i had to excuse myself, go around a corner and giggle.

3) "No warranty" mean "NO WARRANTY".

A friend of mine works as a laptop repair.

He dialed the customer.

H: "...No warranty. The price for fixing this will be

15000 SEK."

I: "Ok, but you see - He's the president of l**y jeans"

H: "...uhhh... it will still cost 15000"

I: "But you dont understand - He's the boss at l**y jeans!"

Needless to say that the interm got to speak to the tech's boss and he had to explain the meaning of warranty.

MCP? - Not impressed...
Posted 03/01/2000 by Glenn
 

So i met this MCP, he was going to install a NIC in a client, add some memory and install NT Server. He got to the point where he should add the NIC drivers (3c5x9) to the system. I told him, you have to run PNPDSABL.BAT (because "Plug and pray" doesn't work) and then run the 3c5x9cfg utility.

So the brainiak ran the program from the Windows NT CMD line and wondered why the program did not work... Duuh?

When the schmuck had gone home, i installed the Nic for free to the company and it lead to me taking over the entire support for that company.

Hey, then I've got four lines!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Rickenbacker
 

While working for a large swedish ISP I got a lot of

interesting callers, here's another one...

(After having checked all the settings, passwords etc)

Me: OK, let's try to connect. You said you had two phone

lines, right?

Customer: Yep, this is a wireless phone, so I can connect

while talking to you.

M: (thinking) Idiot. (Saying) OK miss, just go ahead and

click on "connect" then.

C: OK CLICK-BEEEEP-SCREEECH etc.

M: (hang up) Another day, another problem solved.

PaperLess Printer
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

Another call from the southern executive floor by a poor assistant whose boss insisted we get someone up there NOW because he was unable to print. (This particular individaul is well known for short temper and lack of respect for anyone other than himself.) Technician arrives, trouble light is definitely blinking. Step one, slide open paper tray. Hmm, no paper. Step two, inform VP that paper is needed in printer. Step three, arrogant VP says' "Paper, you need paper to print??" Step four, do not laugh in his face. Step five, post to TechTales.com. Enjoy, his underlings will for a long time behind this character's back.

Fix the net!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Rickenbacker
 

Nothing to do at work, so I'm sending these in as I remember

them. This one's from my time doing internet support:

Customer: What the hell is wrong with your internet?

Me: Our internet? What page are you trying to reach on

our site?

Customer: www.aftonbladet.se (major swedish newspaper's

site, _definitely_ not a page we were in any way affiliated

with), and it says it can't find the page! I demand that you

fix it right now!

M: Well, not to be impolite (lie), but that's not one of our

pages.

C: What? You proved me with internet, right?

M: We provide you with internet _access_...

C: Right! And it's broken, so I suggest you fix it _right_now_

or I'll take this to the press!

M: (pinging server he's trying to reach, can't get through.

Tracerote, find out that for some reason access is through

a finnish server, which is not responding) Well, it seems like

you're being routed through a finnish server, and for some

reason it is down at the moment. I suggest you try later.

C: WHAT? THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! I DEMAND THAT YOU FIX IT!

M: Sir, if you have a problem connecting to the net I can

help you, if not I suggest that you try waiting a little while.

C: I want to talk to your supervisor! I have influence you know!

I'm paying you guys for my internet, and you _will_ fix it!

M: (being overly helpful as lunch is drawing near and I need

to get rid of this asshole) Sir, I just found the phone

number for the finnish company owning that server, if you

like I could give it to you so you can call them.

C: You mean I have to call Finland for you guys!?

M: No sir (looking around frantically for a supervisor,

but they've instantly all gone for lunch when they heard me

talking to this customer), we have nothing whatsoever to do

with that server. We are _not_ the internet, we just give

you access to it.

C: THAT'S A LOAD OF %¤&#%&/" BULLSHIT YOU &¤&/#%(, I'M GOING TO

#%/¤&#/ SUE. I HAVE INFLUENCE YOU KNOW, YOU'LL ALL BE

VERY SORRY!

M: I already am sorry I took this call. Thank you and

good day. (hang up)

Mouse Lube
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I'm a systems Analyst at a big University. A distinguished

gentleman that's a bit computer-challenged just walked in

with the words "Now, don't laugh at me but I think I made

a boo-boo"

I asked him to go on

"Well, you know how when a piece of machinery doesn't

work properly you try using WD-30? Well my mouse was a bit

sluggish so..."

He didn't have a chance to finish, we all started laughing

and referred him to a classic IBM field guide "On Mouseballs"

Just picture all those nice little mousey circuits sludged

for ever. Good thing it wasn't the hard disk acting "Sluggish"

Stupidity ...
Posted 03/01/2000 by identifi3d
 

This didnt happen to me k ? ...

I heard this stupid story about someone who had called tech support for a major company. He was typing on his computer, when suddenly "The computer wouldn't accept anything he typed", in his words. The guy from tech support, got him to check whether the monitor was on - "Monitor, oh you mean the pc TV?" ... no ... there was no light on... this guy told him to follow the wires back ... eventually .. he found the problem .. as the guy was looking for the wires ... he told the tech support bloke that he couldnt see anything ... he could only work by the light from the office window ... "Why?" tech support asked ... "Well ... there's a power cut ... no lights" so this tech support guy, very calmly says ...

"Right, I think we have this one sorted out ... what you have to do is to get all the boxes that the PC came in and pack it all up, just like new."

"It's that bad???" He replied

"Yes, unfortunately, now what you have to do is take it back to the store and tell them you're too $#%^ing stupid to use a computer."

Consequently, the tech support guy was fired... personally, I think he should have been promoted !

Tech Nightmares
Posted 03/01/2000 by Phase Shifter
 

I used to be an office manager at a small computer shop that sold custom-built computers, up-grades, and peripheral components. In addition to office duties and shipping/receiving, I was the main tech support for our customers (it was a very small company).

One day, a man comes in complaining that his new computer is "broke" and this concerned me a great deal because he had just purchased one of the most high-end models we carried at the time and he had had this computer for barely 24 hours. (He paid for the whole thing in cash, too.) I ask him if he had the computer with him or if we could arrange to pick it up for him to determine the problem. He tells me it's out in his truck so we bring it in and I set it up on a workbench.

He stands in the doorway watching me, and just as I am about to plug in the power cable to the outlet, he informs me that he "might have done something I shouldn't have." I pause, and look up at him expectantly, waiting for the hammer to fall. He looks a little embarrassed (probably feeling guilty, I guess) and states: "Well, I didn't mean to, really. I was reading a manual that said I could do that, and I wanted to erase some files I made."

I cringe, thinking this guy might have accidentally deleted a critical system file or possibly some drivers, but I couldn't fathom for the life of me why a person who could barely find the "ON" switch would be digging around his system files. Since this guy had purchased a Windows 95 system (this was a couple of years ago), I was entertaining the unhappy prospect of possibly having to do a complete OS re-install. My experience with this guy when he had bought the computer didn't leave me with much optimism that this would be a minor problem. "What did you do?" I ask him calmly.

He smiles and shrugs (apparently not feeling quite so guilty now). "I typed it on the black screen. The manual said I could delete files that way."

I feel a sudden sinking feeling in my gut as I try to imagine what he's talking about. "What did you type?" I ask, still holding the unplugged power cord in my hand.

"Well, I don't remember exactly. I would have to show you."

"Would you be able to write it down on a piece of paper?"

"Yeah, sure. I can do that."

I get a pad of paper and a pencil and handed it to him. He writes something down and I begin to sweat.

A minute later, he hands the pad back to me and I read the message.

FORMAT C:

I stare at the paper for a long time. I blink, and read it again. Yep, it's still there. I'm not hallucinating. Then, the power cord slips out of my hand and I have a sudden, overwhelming urge to sit down. I feel nauseous and dizzy. Miraculously, I find a nearby chair and dump myself into it.

Alarmed by my reaction, the man approaches me with concern and apprehension. "What's wrong? Is it that bad? Can you fix it?"

I take a few breaths. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or scream, or do all three. This was too unreal. This guy hadn't had his computer a whole DAY and he decides to reformat the drive. A very expensive computer and one that he had paid for in cash. A less scrupulous person might have taken advantage of the situation. I, on the other hand, was going into mild shock.

"No," I finally told him. "You killed it. It's dead. It will take a long time to bring it back to life again, and even then, it will be horribly traumatized from this incident. It will never be the same again." Somewhere, a small part of me felt ashamed at abusing this man's ignorance (not to mention losing a good sale), but until he learned more about computers, he was dangerous to every computer within his wallet's reach. Someone had to nip this in the bud now. Someone had to teach this idiot a lesson.

The man looked at me with the doe-eyed fear of a child who had just accidentally killed a family pet. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to do it. Honest."

"I can give you a full refund for the computer. I don't think it should be used again for a while. It's going to need months of therapy to rehabilitate it again, perhaps years."

The man's head bobbed up and down like a cork in a washing machine. "I understand," he replied emphatically. "I'll never do it again. Not ever. I promise!" He paused again, his expression sobering as he contemplated life without a computer. "But what will I use to play video games with? That's mainly what I got it for."

An evil gleam comes into my eye. "Could I interest you in a GameBoy?"

Video Madness
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

Goes to show you don't need a computer to get ID10T's

in your face...

I work at the central video equipment pool for my

University. Being just a student tech, all helpdesk

calls get sent straight to the boss(I'm gonna miss that part..)

But, we all like to keep our ears open for gems like this:

and note that the customer does not have a good grip on

English...and an armload of VHS tapes.

Cust: I had you duplicate some tapes for me, and I sent

a LARGE CONTRIBUTOR one of the copies and he said he can't

hear the presenter.(tape of an address in a large auditorium)

Boss:OK, let's take a look on them on our machines:

Cust:Here's the copy the guy said he can't hear. I also

have the original.

Boss: Ah, good...

(Boss plays tape: it works rather well, but the sound is

muffled. Clearly, the mike the man is wearing is not

connected directly through the camera, but rather is

picking up the room's PA. Of course it sounds like garbage,

but the trouble was at the recording.

To make matters worse, the machine the promptly eats the

tape. Damn. No prob...it was only a copy...just buy em

another blank and...)

Cust: OH NO! That was the original tape!

Boss: Huh? I thought you said that was only a copy?

Cust: (Pointing to label, which is, sure enough, marked

"ORIGINAL")NO, that is original!

Boss: I thought...argh. Well...let's check that bad

copy...on another machine...and see how bad it is

anyway.

Cust: No, that one I gave you was the original. And I

don't have the other tape, the MAJOR DONOR has it. The

other ones are the rest of the same batch.

They go round and round for a bit, I'm trying not to

laugh, Boss's trying not to go postal. Boss finally settles

on explaining why the problem occurred at recording.

Boss:Now, if you had hired someone and used professional

equipment instead of borrowing ours and doing it yourself,

(our pool only lets out cheap VHS equipment, boss isn't

about to let just anybody have a Betacam), it would have

come out a lot better.

Cust: Oh, why you need use professional equipment?

Boss: Well you get what you pay for, it's higher quality.

Cust finally leaves.

Boss: Now, how do you tell someone like that, "Your

original sucks!"?

HTTP 404
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

This is a message that I've got in the mail box of the support department.

)Hallo,

)ik wou een email naar amerika sturen maar ze

)zeggen dat ik HTTP 404 niet heb wat is dat?

)hoe kan ik daar aangeraken??

translated into English:

)Hello,

)I wanted to send an email to the US, but they

)say that I haven't got HTTP 404. What is that?

)How can I get it??

This guy wanted to send an email, but for some reason the web-based email provider was missing a page and he got HTTP ERROR 404.

type errors
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I worked as a system admin for this company and one of the staff had been using a computer for a long time. Anyway our custom software supplier sent her some instructions to install an upgrade. We are talking very basic DOS here. Ok so I am at home and I recieve this phone call:

(caller) can you help me

(me) yeah sure whats up

(caller) I get an error

(me) when

(caller) when i type in dos

(me) ok, whats the error

(caller) bad command or file name

(me) whats the command you typed

(caller) cd\ab

(me) yeah, cd \ ab

(caller)yeah (little did i realise that she missed out the spaces in the instructions)

IT Idiots...
Posted 03/01/2000 by miseryweeps
 

As a former help desk employee for a large ISP that recently merged with Mindspring, I have had my share of surprise at the tech world. I start a new job tomorrow at a major company that has become a household name. (Think: the copy people. Came up with the GUI for Mac...People assume that when they go to "photocopy" a document, the are going to "Z-rox" it.) When I went into my interview with these tech challenged HR ladies, they informed me that no one in HR knows how to use Outlook Express, and that as a new hire they would need me to teach them how to use it. And you have to wonder how these people cope at a company of this nature...Thank goodness there are computer literate teenaged freaks around like me to help the adult society cope.

Experience comes with age
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I'm a student at a pre-university-level computer-school. We basicly learn how to program the thingies.

Our database (DB) teacher has worked professional with DB for 4 years, when he is doing his r&r is he working with DBs. But one day did he managed to astound us all.

He had made a class example on the projector, and wanted to show us how we saved our work. (note: we are all more-or-less PC-nerds, so saving files should be the least of our probs).

So he clicked on )Files -) Save As -) clicked into the right dir. And then he told us that he didn't like how it looked, he wanted a new Dir. So what do you do ?

A: You Minimize the DB application (and the Save-As window).

Click [START], find /Programs/ -) find /Windows Explorer/ (a,b,c,d,...,u,v,windows E) -) click into the dir -) click )Files -) new -) folder "name"

and then back to the DB application...

Should we give our teacher a basic "how to use your PC" course, or should we look the other way ?

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Aaron in Pennsylvania
 

I am always astounded by some of the mentality of people who call in...

To make the Internet easier for people (a tactic, which, of course, doesn't work), we have a small box with a DIAL to click on in which the software will connect the user automatically to the internet without typing in anything (the username and password is put in during setup)...After a successful connect, the word DIAL changes to HANG UP, which of course, implies that after you're done, click on it and it will drop the connection...This confuses more people than you can imagine...

Eudora: I've heard "Endora", "Europa", and even so much as "European Light".

Netscape: One customer always pronounces it like Nescafe coffee (i.e. Net-scup-pay)..

"The letter O or the number O?"

"For the spot that says "Your name", what do I put in there?"

I once had a woman who was SURE "no dialtone" was on our end, because "all her friends were getting it too". Even the senior tech couldn't convince her otherwise...

Macguyver
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

One night I was on the phone to a customer, and I overheard one of our trainees also on the phone. I just had to put my customer on hold and laugh my ass off when I heard

"That's right, not even Macguyver could fix that"

Fatal errors, stop that!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

My dad bought a brand new Hewlett Packard about a week ago. He told him it would freeze a lot on him, so I came over to install some software and check it out. I was showing him so things when the screen "froze" with a fatal exception. As I'm reading the error my dad says to me "What did you do? You locked it up!" I explained this error is either a software or a hardware problem, but to this day my dad still thinks if you "do" something wrong you'll get a fatal exception.

But my tv works just fine
Posted 03/01/2000 by Von Knut
 

I am currently working on a news-radio in Denmark, as the lead technician.

As en extra service we do a lot of internet broadcasting with real-audio files and so on.

I once send a rm-file to a major political party, with an interview on, and this was the reply I got:

Dear xxx

We have a problem with the sound file.

The sound quality is bad, and it took a loong time to download.

Apart from that, we have a problem with playing them from one of our computers.

The problem can't be with our computer, -we can still see the tv-channels...

-Duhh?

And by the way, yes I did send them a good quality sound file. -a nice 35 meg. waw file instead of the "bad" 1 meg. rm file.

Let me see them download that with their crappy 33 kb. connection :)

I cant handle technical things
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

OK - I am losing my mind - received a call from one of the

Vice Presidents of the ITM dept - who took 5 minutes

to figure out what department he worked for - after

tackling that tough piece of info, I figured out the

problem he was having and had to send a tech to the

site - I asked him for his office or cubicle number,

and he said "just put 123". I advised him that I

needed the correct location of his desk so I could

direct the tech to him - his reply was "I cant handle

very technical things".

Heres the 2 problems -

1 - he believes that finding a tag on his cubicle wall

is very "technical"

2- HE IS A VP FOR ITM!!!!

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES MANAGEMENT!!!

AND HE CANT HANDLE TECHNICAL THINGS!!!!

Why am I not a vp. Why am I not drinking vodka right

now.

missing keys
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I don't accually work in Tech support. I work in parts sales. I had a gentleman call in that had a lap top. After giving my opening I asked him how could i help him. He said he needed a "B" key for his key board. It turns out that he was vacuuming his his laptop and the vacuum sucked his "B" up into the vacuum. I asked him if he could get the key out of the bag and replace it on the keyboard. He told me that it was chopped in 6 different pieces. I then asked him what kind of Keyboard it was. The kicker was that it was for a laptop system. i told him that he would need to go to Tech support and that he would have to send the system in to get a new keyboard.

All that for vacuuming the dust of the the laptop..

"You wanna What?!"
Posted 03/01/2000 by Molly Southard
 

Provided to my by a co-worker while we were both working for an ISP (The names have been changed to protect copyrights, etc...):

“Thank you for calling Said ISP, my name is Connie. Could I have your billing telephone number, area code first, please?”

Sexy Female Voice: “I want to have sex with you.”

“Uh. Excuse me, you wanna what?”

Slightly Upset Male Voice: “I’m sorry… This is the problem I’m calling about. My billing telephone number is 503-555-2222, and I have a problem with my computer.”

Sexy Female Voice: “I want to have sex with you.”

“Sir, what is that noise in the background?”

“That’s the problem. I was surfing around on my wife’s work computer, and went to a site, and now the computer pipes up with that every 15 seconds. I need this fixed. My wife’s coming home tomorrow morning!”

Sexy Female Voice: “I want to have sex with you.”

“I see. Sir, what type of sites were you surfing?”

Mumble, Mumble.

“I’m sorry? I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Uh... Alternative entertainment sites. I think something downloaded into the registry. I need to know how to remove it.”

Sexy Female Voice: “I want to have sex with you.”

“Well sir, unfortunately, it’s not something we support here. You’ll have to contact your operating system manufacturer and have them help you.”

Wailing: “But their only open from 8am to 5pm PST. It’s after 11pm. My wife comes back tomorrow morning at 6am. PLEASE!”

Sexy Female Voice: “I want to have sex with you.”

“Well, sir, the only other thing I can recommend is to run a clean install of your operating system again, then.”

“I don’t have enough floppy disks to save all the real estate information she has on here… )Sexy Female Voice: “I want to have sex with you.”( …ARGH!”

"OOPS!"
Posted 03/01/2000 by Molly Southard
 

A call that I took went as follows:

“Thank you for calling Spirit ISP, my name is Molly. May I have your billing telephone number, area code first, please.”

“Uh, yeah… 611-555-9999.”

“How can we help you?”

“Well, I use Web Browser “X”, instead of Web Browser “Y” that you sent out, and I have a question about it.”

“OK.”

“At the address line, there’s a pop-down menu that drops down and lists all sorts of addresses.”

“Yes.”

“Where do they come from?”

“Well, they are addresses of different sites that people have gone to so that in the future, if they want to go back to them, they can simply choose it from the pop-down list and go.”

Long silence.

“I’m going to kill him.” Click.

DoH!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Tom
 

A little someting that should make people cringe....

User calls up (imagine a very pompus english accent)" perhaps it would be nice if i could print the documents I type out"

I arrive on site

LOAD PAPER IN THE PRINTER!!!!

and volia

Somedays, its enough to make you cry!

Rasputin
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for a 'small' retail computer supplier in the UK. My job is to provide both software and hardware support. Last week a customer called in after receiving her bios update disk. She was a little confused about how to use it. It went something like this.

Tech: "I need you to put the disk into the drive!"

Customer: "OK! Done!"

Tech: "Double click on MY COMPUTER, and then again on FLOPPY."

Cust: "It says A IS NOT ACCESSIBLE - THE DEVICE IS NOT READY."

Tech: "Did you push the disk in hard enough?"

Cust: "The drawer wont close!"

Tech: "What drawer?"

Cust "Where the disks go!"

Tech "Oh! Do you have an old style 5 1/4 drive?"

Cust "No!"

Tech: PAUSE..."Oh, no! You're not putting the floppy disk into the CD drawer are you?"

Cust: "Well...yes! I can't use my floppy drive!"

Tech: "Why not???"

Cust: "My son put some toast in there!"

Tech: LONG PAUSE. "I will have to refer you to another department. What you need to do is call 999 and ask for the psychiatric helpline...."

Cord less internal modem?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Corey G.
 

You have an internal modem right?

"Yeah"

Do you have it pluged in to the wall right now?

"I dosen't need to be plugged into the wall"

What?

"It's an internal modem it doesnt need to be plugged into anything"

You have the cord coming from the phone jack to the computer right?

"I don't need it to do that it's internal, it does not need to be plugged into anything"

*click*

You Have What???
Posted 03/01/2000 by Zaphod
 

I work for an Internet company, providing a phone answering service over the net.

The other day we got a help request from someone that wanted to know if our service will work with both there internet services.

See they had both AOL and America Online....

After a good long laugh, we told then that they would have to drop one of the services since AOL is not compatible with America Online.

Problems 30,000 feet in the air
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I support a financial firm and I was fowarded a phone call by

our helpdesk one day from a user on a flight using a phone on

an airplane.

Me: System Support

Helpdesk: Hi, I need to transfer a call to you from a remote

user who is trying to connect his laptop to our network.

Me: Ok, transfer him.

Me: How may I help you?

User: Yes, I have to email my assistant to have her rearrange

my meetings but I can't log into the network.

Me: Well, the helpdesk tells me you are on a plane so you

must be using a cell phone modem or an analog jack provided

by the airline.

User: No. I had an infared LAN card installed last month

because I move frequently between my office and the conference

room.

Me: The conference room and office are ten feet apart. You're

thousands of miles away now. Infared cards have a range of

a few yards.

User: Oh. Then can you walk me through setting up the

software for the cell-modem I have for my laptop?

Me: It may take a while, the phone bill would be expensive

User: Don't worry, I'm on an expense account.

Me: Why don't you just call her then?

Computers tease dogs
Posted 03/01/2000 by Wilbur Jasawictz
 

My sister got a new Mac G3 for her birthday a month ago. We also had gotten for Christmas a labrador puppy. When you turned on the computer, it would whirr and for some reason this would freak the puppy out. He would bark and bark at it, but if you moved the computer just a little, he'd freak out even more and run away. My sister teased him something awful, turning the computer on and off, just to get him to go crazy. Mom told her not to do that but she didn't listen.

We went away last weekend and had the neighbor take care of the puppy. We got a call from her on Sunday, and she said that the puppy got lonely and did some damage to the house. She told us he chewed up a rug in the hall and knocked over some small tables we have with plants on them. Mom said it was no big deal. But when we got home the puppy got sick of the computer teasing him I guess and CHEWED IT ALL UP OH MY GOD HOW FUNNY. The keyboard keys were all over the room, the mouse was chewed in half, and the cover to the Mac was all chewed up and stuff. We call the Mac guys and they said we couldn't put it back together because the puppy had chewed the ends of all the plugs. We took it to the shop and had to buy a new cover, mouse and keyboard and cords and junk and it cost a lot.

My sister got in a lot of trouble because we knew the dog did it because it was teased so much. We have to keep it up high on the desk from now on. When I get a new computer I am not teasing the dog with it because he is still getting bigger.

Oh I forgot to tell you...
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

This actually didn't happen to me but I thought it was kind of funny. It happened to a friend of mine..I felt sorry for him too. Anyway he was taking a call and had asked the customer to click on Dial Up Networking and she said she kept clicking on it and opening it up but there was nothing in there. So after about 25 min the tech finally asked her what was wrong and she said "Well I didn't want to tell you but there's no Dial Up Networking." You can only imagine what was going thru his mind. He then asked her why she didn't tell him sooner. She could only say "Well I didn't want you to feel bad." You can only imagine the rest of the call.

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

While attending a local business college, where I was taking

courses in A+ and MCSE, we were called upon to do some minor

repairs to computers in the school we were at. I was called

in to look at a computer that was giving one long continuous

beep. Not having had much experience in POST codes, I had

no idea what was wrong. However while looking the computer

over, I noticed a piece of paper over the 5.25 slot (they

still had software that ran off of the old floppies). I

couldn't figure out why they were there, so I asked the

instructor what the paper was for. He said that it was to

stop the students from putting CD-ROMS into the floppy drive.

The pieces of paper actually had written on them "Do not

stick CD's in this slot".

I asked the instructor if this was a real problem. He said

that they still have to get someone to remove CD's from the

floppy drives about three times a month.

Apparently the old addage still holds - 'Any port in a storm'

or in this case - Any drive will do.

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Larry Gibson
 

I'm a freelance technician in Helena, Montana. I was ordering additional ram for one of my clients and I knew there was a possibility that their system was proprietary. So, I called and talked with the secretary. I asked her to look at the computer, on the floor under her desk, and tell me the model number. She said that it didn't have a model number. It just said "Dell".

I had worked on the machine the day before, and I KNEW there was model info on the face of it. I asked her to look again. She said the same thing. So, I drove across town to look at it myself. Of course, the comouter had the model info on it. But the MONITOR didn't!! To her, the monitor was the computer!

The Start Bar's Gone!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Larry Gibson
 

I'm a freelance technician. One of my regular customers called me and complained that the start bar was missing from his screen. We all know the problem here and I didn't think it would be a big deal. I told him how to use his mouse to resize the start bar so he could see it again. But, he said that it wasn't working. Whenever he held the mouse button down, he go a menu.

I re-explained that he had to use the LEFT mouse button to do this. He swore that he was. I asked if his mouse was set for left handers. He said no. I had him look at the monitor and see if the start bar had been minimized AND moved. He couldn't see it anywhere. Finally, I told him that I could come out and fix it, but that I would charge for the response. I warned him that it would take longer for him to write the check than it would take for me to fix it. He agreed. I went ot his house, found the start bar on the left side of the monitor. Resized it and put it back on the bottom. Then, I waited while he wrote me a $55 check. I had warned him!

Writable ROM?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for a large software company in Washington State, and, among toher technologies, I support users on Handheld PC's using WIndows CE. I was asked a question by a senior software engineer about his new HPC:

Him: There're several applications in ROM I never use. How can I delete them?

me: Excuse me? Delete them? ROM means "Read-Only Memory." Deletion is a write function.

him: Yeah; I know; I just wondered if it was possible.

Me: Why?

Him: Well, I just wanted to free up some space for other applications.

Me: Read-Only Memory can't be written to. Even if you could somehow nuke those apps, you couldn't put in new ones.

Him: Oh, yeah. Right. Never mind.

So even those of us who know better ask stupid questions from time to time (of, course, it never happened to ME).

The most annoying Question
Posted 03/01/2000 by George
 

The one question I hear more often than not when answering a tech support call is Are you guys having a problem? When I answer no and they think I am lying. They think the problems are because we are so bored at the office that we disconnect and reconnect customers for fun. They actually think we are "picking" on them. They start yelling how their service is crap and yet they won't let you speak to fix their problem. I found I turn into my wife at that point. "DO YOU WANT ME TO HELP YOU?" I either hear "click" or "I am sorry. What do you want me to do?" My response is usually don't worry about it. What I really would like to say is you should be sorry.

Punch Card Problems
Posted 03/01/2000 by Araneas
 

This one really belongs to my dad.

Many years ago, he was using a PDP 8 with 8k of core

for generating geological maps. All the programmes

and data were entered via punch card or paper tape. On

one run, it just wouldn't work. All the cards were

manually checked, a very labour and time intensive process.

Still nothing worked. Eventually, the whole run was repunched

card by card and in the end it did work.

Some detective work revealed the source of the errors.

The dye used in the blue punch cards was slightly hygroscopic.

The absorbed water made all the blue cards slightly longer than

the rest, just long enough to throw off the reader.

The solution: replace all the blue cards.......

To Simple to Think
Posted 03/01/2000 by Don Adamson
 

I was called up to one of our edit suites because the editor just could not continue to work because his color monitor was in black and white. I put a tape in a machine, and yes, it was in b/w. Turning up the chroma knob brought in rich beautiful color. He thanked me. I asked him how much money he pays at home to have little problems taken care of, without checking the knobs first......One hour later, same room..."The record machine will not record!" I enter the room, looking right at the right hand machine....THERE'S NO TAPE IN IT ! !. The Fool puts a tape in it and presto!... On the way out, I tripped over his diaper bag.

.....May all of us technicians praise God that these challenged people have no intention of Airline Pilot careers.

Important Spam.. Or How I lost my messages
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for an ISP that provides services for a Niche market.

Many of our customers have programs that link into the connectivity/Email aspect of our service and so we wind up supporting these as well. This sometimes causes interesting issues....

Like this one....

I recieved a call from a user who was complaining that they were getting messages all day long from an undisclosed recipient, and that they were getting tired of deleting them! They wanted me to get rid of all the Spam!!!

I offered to walk the user through setting up a filter in her Email program to help filter these so she never even saw them.

But before I did I needed to make sure that these weren't actually important messages (As I said these folks are NOT very technical, and this has happened before).

The user went on to state that they didn't think they were important... and that they had already deleted about 20 of them... and hadn't seemed to have missed any important Email.

I wasn't really convinced (you wouldn't have been either had you been talking to her), so first I verified that they were running a decent AV program, and then I had them open one of the messages (not launch, just open). The user did so... and I hear over the phone... comming from the users speakers....'this is _____ testing to see if my voicemail is working'

The user got REAL quiet at that point... and asked if these could be from the program they had to send their voicemail to their computer.... I said yeah that was probably it.

The user said 'oh...' and hung up.

I wonder how many of those 20 messages she deleted were important!!!!!!!

Modem Volume
Posted 03/01/2000 by Asuka Langley Soryu
 

I work in AOL's tech support and today I got a call that just completely blew my mind.

This lady calls up saying that she was getting GPFs and getting bumped off line. She told me that the hard drive was recently reformatted and everything was reinstalled "by a tech" but she was having problems with AOL ever since she got an update (you know, one of those sign-off updates that AOL is famous for).

"Great," I think. "Probably just a bad TOD download." All that was really needed was to reinstall the software and make sure the updates download correctly. The member's got two phone lines and is fairly adept at moving about the machine, so we go through the reinstall.

Then I find out she's also been having trouble connecting. She's got a brand new Lucent Winmodem (groan!) so I go in and walk her through reconfiguring the settings and she's able to get online, send email, and go to the web all with no errors and no bump-offs. You really couldn't ask the thing to work any better than it was considering the hardware she was using.

However, life is just a bit more complicated. The member at this point has a complaint over the fact that the modem is not connecting at 57600 like it used to but now actually reporting her real connect speed in the 20000's (I had to limit the sign-on speed to get the LT modem to stabilize - it still worked better than it did before, but it WAS using v.34). But her main complaint was that even though she had the modem volume set to "low" it was making more noise now than it did on the other settings, and she wanted it fixed.

Well, I helped her through stting the modem volume, but the modem refused to lower the volume any more (it really wasn't all that loud to begin with, but she didn't like it). I explained to her that I had done all I could with the volume and that if the modem was connecting okay but wouldn't take the volume commands then she would need to speak to the manufacturer to see if they could force it to both connect and lower the volume at the same time.

At this point, she became a real pain (she'd been kind of annoying the entire call, but we were chewing on 30 minutes by now and my nerves were frazzled) and demanded that it work HER WAY. It "wasn't working right" if it was louder than before and it had always "been right" before. I asked her if it had connected correctly when it was lower volume. She said "no." I pointed out that it's possible that it's supposed to be loud when it works right.

She asked how to uninstall the new copy of the AOL software since it didn't work the way she wanted it to. I asked "You want to go back to the copy that caused GPFs?" She said "Yes." I showed her where the uninstall was, told her which one was the new one and said "uninstall that one and it will take you back to the copy of AOL that doesn't work. Have a nice day." At that point I hung up - I just couldn't take any more madness.

Sometimes I just want to reach through the phone and strangle them, I swear. I mean, come on! Do you want the volume just right or do you want to get online??? This is the kind of person that I wish would just cancel the account and get out of our hair because you know that they'll never be happy no matter what you do for them. Did it ever occur to her that there might be a REASON that modem was $20 cheaper than the others?

Oh well, I'll just console myself witht the thought that if they didn't call, we wouldn't have jobs.

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Tom
 

I worked as an IT specialist for a professional school, which means that there are schools for psychologists, lawyers, doctors, as well as comp sci, business, and education.

Being very cheap with everything that had to do with equipment, all of the secretaries had 386 machines with win95, and 4-8 megs of RAM. Even with this setup, the school bought the best and newest office software.

My co-worker and I continuously received calls stating that their machines were freezing, GPFs, illegal operations, etc. We had tried to get the school to upgrade at least the RAM, so that some of these errors could be alleviated.

Because this never happened and we would receive at least a call a day with this same problem, we went around to all of the machines, told office to autosave the documents every 2 minutes. We ordered little round stickers that said "Help Desk" and put them on the reset buttons of the offending machines.

"ANY" key missing from the keyboard
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

Hey guys,

This day is one of the most memoriable day in my professional life.

While, I was working for Customer Service Department : one fine morning

i received a call from one of our clients who mentioned that he had a very

serious problem with his Computer and he is unable to proceed with his work.

I guessed it was some problem with our software which was installed at his office.

the conv went on something like this

(Me) : Good morning, Customer Service

(C) : Oh !! Mam, am facing a major problem... you know i am unable to logon to your software!!

(Me) : Sir, could you please explain the problem in detail...

(C) : Mam, a message has appeared on the screen which reads : "press any key to continue"....

(Me) : Oh!! this is not at all a problem... just press any key... this will take you further..

(C) : Yes, this is a big problem.... my keyboard does not have "ANY" key.... i dont know

we are using a very old model of the computer and its accessiories.....

(Me) : Secret thought : Oh gosh!!! what's he upto.....

Short Tales
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for a large computer superstore answering the incoming calls. The first involves a woman who called in asking for a cheap computer so she could use some applications and surf the Internet. She then asked, "I was wondering...do I need a monitor to go with this computer?" I thought she was joking, at first. The second tale just happened a few moments ago. A customer calls in asking for a Compaq Presario laptop. When I asked him which one, his reply was, "I dunno...the first one." I told him I need a model number or price range, and he gave me the latter. I swear, some people...

Keyboard? What's that?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Ryan H.
 

One day I was at a computer store waiting to talk to the technical services desk, and the guy in front of me was chatting with the technician trying to get free technical advice. At one point, I heard the guy say, "Do I really need a keyboard with this computer?" I was thinking, "Is this guy serious?" By the way, I'm only 13 years old and even I know not to ask such a question...

Monitor acting funny...
Posted 03/01/2000 by Tetsubo
 

Love your site, I look forward to every update.

I'm not in the tech support business but many of my

friends are one kind if techie or another. So I have picked

up quite a bit of knowledge over the years. At the time of

this tale I was working at an antenna manufacturer. We made

stationary and mobile antennas for ham radios and wireless

communication in the Ghz range.

I was in the shipping area helping the shippers fill a

parts order for a customer. I noticed that the UPS computer

monitor was behaving oddly. It was warped and the colors

were shifted towards the purple. The image was barely

usable. I turned to the shipper.

"Hey Larry, what's up with this monitor?"

Larry replies, "I don't know, it's been like that for an

hour."

I look around and noticed a medium sized box sitting next

to the monitor. The image was warping in the direction of

the box.

"Hey Larry, what's in the box?"

"Magnets for car mounts." (Very powerful magnets used to

hold antennas to car trunks and such.)

I reach over and move the box to another table. The

monitor suddenly returns to normal or at least closer to

normal. Larry is amazed. I had to explain how magnets can

be bad for CRT's...

Field Service Manager.
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I used to work for a rather large Australian Finance company in Tech support in England.

We had Field Support Managers who's job was to go round the field ( Insurance sales men who work from home) and educate them about IT matters and how to use their PC Properly etc..

well one morning we get a call from her to say that her laptops not working too well and could we please take a look at it.

when she brings it in its in a right mess and whats happened is :

She has poured coffee in the keyboard and then placed it in the airing cupboard to dry it out and left untill morning of course the heating has come on over night and completely melted the whole machine , the keyboard is now one molten mass of plastic the screen has popped and baically it went in the bin.

But this is someone who is meant to be training other people in the art of looking after their computers....

well done that lady.

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for a manufacturing company that uses computers to save random information taken from samples in the production process. Recently a lady came to me saying she couldn't logon to her computer. When I looked at her computer, I had it logged on in just a few seconds. She ask what was wrong with the computer. I told her that nothing was wrong with the computer, she had misspelled her name.

Is that your computer makeing that noise?......
Posted 03/01/2000 by Rob
 

Hello, I work for a well-known Internet provider........ one night I took a call from a member who was having problems with getting error messages all over their computer when they are on the internet. At one point, I was getting rather frustrated because the caller was not reading me all the error messages, and was getting ahead of me durring the call (the #2 most annoying thing that can be done to a tech).......

After about 30 min (did I mention I had a new tech listening to my calls at the time?) I hear an electronic voice in the background........ thinking that his computer was saying something to him, I asked him what his computer was saying.........

He informed me that it wasn't his computer, but his wife...... who had her voice box removed due to smokeing too much.......... at this point I utalized my mute button to contain myself (as I felt extremely bad for saying that) --- the newbie that was listening to the call was laughing soo hard she had to walk away..........

Never again will I ask someone "is that your computer saying something?"

End-User, spelled i-d-1-0-t (all lowercase, of course)
Posted 03/01/2000 by Simon Chang
 

I am a desktop support engineer working for a medium-size corporation somewhere in the Northeast region. Now the service calls we get each day are normally passed on to us by the Help Desk which is the Level 1 and 2 support. We in turn get the tickets and call the client(s) and go to the deskside and address any issue that may arise. In a way we are also known as the Level 3 service and support.

This morning we got a call saying that a user was having problems logging onto twenty machines located in a training room. The lead engineer got to the site, and within half an hour determined what neither the Help Desk nor the end-user (now spelled I-D-1-0-T) ever bothered asking: The reason these Windows NT workstations could not log on is that she typed the password "password" with a capital P in each case. The lead engineer simply retyped it and it was fine now.

Later on, rumor had it that she was the granddaughter of e.e.cummings who got sick of her grandfather's ugly spelling habit and sought to correct it...

Regards,

Simon Chang

Run, zip! See zip run.
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I do support for a program called Calmira, and answering the support@ email address, I get some groaners sometimes.

A couple months ago, I got an email that said:

"I downloaded your calm302.zip program, and it wouldn't run!"

After some correspondance with him, I determined that he TRIED TO RUN THE FRIKKIN ZIP FILE!

I had to explain the concept of unzipping a *.zip file, which only lead to the question:

"Um, where can I get this pkzip company?" (My, aren't corporate acquisitions fun?). I wound

up walking him through the steps of installing pkzip and uncompressing the *.zip file.

Urrgh...

It gets better... Turned up that he was running Win98, and I had to be the one to tell him that

it wouldn't work on his computer (Calmira is designed *specifically* for Windows 3.1 and the website

makes that absolutely clear).

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

My apologies to "KC", the tech who sent in this story, but

geez--45 minutes of struggling to get the user to right click

on "My Computer"?? Why not cut to the chase after the second

attempt failed, and go with what the customer obviously knew

how to do--doubleclick? "Doubleclick on 'My Computer', then

on 'Control Panel', then on 'System'" gets you to exactly the

same place as the right-click method that KC was trying to

use, but without the struggle and frustration on the part of

both the eu and the tech.

M: Okay, I want you to bring up your computer's properties. Could you right click on the

My Computer icon and select properties from the menu?

C: I don't see any properties or a menu.

M: What do you see?

C: I see the A Drive, C drive, and the D drive ---

M: you doubled clicked I need you to right click.

C: oh, sorry.

(after four repeated failures of this)

M: Here's what you do, move your pointer on the screen to the My Computer icon and then

press the right mouse button once.

C: I don't understand.

(put customer on hold to bang head against desk)

M: Move your mouse pointer to the My Computer icon. There are TWO buttons on your

mouse, press the button on the right side of the mouse.

C: What do you mean?

(put customer on hold and started to cry)

After 45 minutes of explaining and re-explaining the concept of left and right mouse

buttons, I finally found out that her computer was 32MB under our minimum memory

requirement and had a tech sent to her site.

Thanks to: KC

My modem sounds like I kicked the pig
Posted 03/01/2000 by Shawn Hensger
 

I work tech support for a major isp in the south and i got this call well it was my first call of my shift.

Thank you for calll such and such support how can i help you.

I need some help. (very slured and barley understandable)

Can i have you e-mail adress

akdmasfkakflmfm@bbbeis.net( she is very drunk)

ummmmmmmmmm ok what seem to be the problem?

my modem sounds like i kicked the kids pigs Hehehehe

mam thats what its souposed to sound like ok

well why cant i get oneline??

well mam are servers in your area are down for repear they should be up in about a hour

oh ok well can you fix the problem

well mam its the way the computer is setup

oh ok

thank you for call sdfgsfd.net

(turs out she called three outher time in 15 min. and she was extremley drunk) ah i love my job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elusive "Start" Button
Posted 03/01/2000 by Joseph
 

I used to work as a PC tech for a large retail firm in Toronto. All users' PCs had Windows 95. I recieved many outrageous calls from witless users, but at least half-a-dozen were similar to the following conversation:

(Answering the Help Desk phone...)

USER: Oh, hello, I seem to be having (insert simple problem here) with my computer.

ME: Okay, click on the "Start" button and --

USER: Pardon?

ME: The "Start" button.

USER: What's that?

ME: It should be in the bottom left of your screen. See it?

USER: No.

ME: Well, sometimes it gets moved around. Do you see the Start button anywhere else on your screen.

USER: No.

ME: Do you see the time displayed in the bottom right of your screen?

USER: Yes.

ME: Is there a grey bar at the bottom of your screen?

USER: Yes.

ME: But, there's no Start button at the bottom left of your screen?

USER: No.

ME: (Irritated) Okay, hold down the CTRL key.

USER: (Repeating my instructions)'...Hold down control key...' Okay.

ME: Now, while holding down the CTRL key, hit the ESC key.

USER: '...Hit escape key' -- Oh, there it is!

Not sure why the Start button is so elusive to some users, but the CTRL+ESC trick worked every time.

Is the slash forward or backwards?
Posted 03/01/2000 by William Main
 

I was servicing serveral large hospital systems running Unix and Universe flavour of PICK. Universe created flles for it's own use which started and ended with the ampersand (&) symbols. One day I had to delete some files but needed root privilege. The operator on duty at the hospital would not give me the password but said she would type the command herself if I gave it to her. This is in the late eighties when email and Internet did not exist for most people so I agreed. The command in Unix was

rm -rm \&SAVEDFILES\&

I directed her to type this as "rm space dash rm space backslash capital savedfiles backslash ampersand".

This should deletes all files recursively and does not ask permisson (the -rm switches). The backslahes allowed the typeing of SPECIAL characters (the & characters) in Unix as normal characters.

Instead she typed

rs -rm /&SAVEDEILES/&

Now remember she is logged in as root so what she just told Unix to do is to delete ALL file from root (\) recursivly (-rm) in the background (&).

She says 'I get an error that the path was not found'. This is in response to the SAVEDFILES/. I ask her to read exactly what she had typed back to me. She says "Just a sec, the phones ringing".

After a minute she comes back and says "That was admitting, they cannot admit anyone and some other people called to say that they cannot log in."

She read me what she typed and It sounded OK. I told her I would call her back. After I hung up and startd thinking about it, it suddenly dawned on me what she had done. It took them 4 days to get back up and running.

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Deanna Holland
 

When my email became inoperable, I called Alltel for support and found out that it couldn't be fixed over the phone. This was part of the converstaion:

My question: Well, what do you think it needs then?

Alltel: A priest !!

Second question: Would that be for an exorcism or the last rites?

Alltel: Whatever helps the most!

Expert?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I'm VP of a Networking/Internet/Software Company in NYC, and I will sometimes

take calls myself from customers we've had since we were a startup.

Well, one company which is a HUGE fashion company hired an IT Systems Admin so they can

stop paying us (which is understandable). Well, since they've hired this moron, we've been there MORE

times then previously. Anyhow, this guy is an MCSE and he's paid $75 k a year, but is absolutely clueless.

He'll call us secretly and pay us personally so he can keep his job. He calls one day and says to me.."I downloaded a file and I lost it.

Where is it?" So I said, "well, the file goes where you tell it to..where'd you tell it to go?"

He replies:"To my harddrive"

Me:Ok..open up explorer and choose C

He:Hmmmm...there are aLOT of Cs on here...choose any one of them?

Me:Ummmm...no..on the left panel, it should be the drive under A:

He:nope...I don't see no C under no A (his exact response)

After a couple of minutes I realized he opened Internet Explorer and was at his default homepage of MSN! There are C's throughout the entire page!

And THIS is an MCSE!!

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Araneas
 

Before I got into tech support, I worked in maintenance

for a large charitable organization. My job was do to all

the little tasks that keep an organization functioning smoothly

like setting up the cubes, unplugging toilets, changing

light bulbs and putting up white boards. I might also add

that the first time I used a computer involved punch cards and

FORTRAN IV....

The organization had just set up a new computer

training lab to give unemployed people basic computer skills.

The lab instructor, a very nice person, had just set up

the network printer. Of course, in accordance with Murphy's

Law it didn't work.

A group of instructors was clustered around

the printer and server trying to figure out what was wrong.

They tried various things for about half an hour without

success and then they went for lunch. All this time I had

been going about my work hanging white boards and the like.

I got of the step ladder, went to the printer, turned it on

and went for lunch myself.....

When I returned to string some cable, there was again a cluster

of instructors trying to figure how "magically" the printer

started working.

Computer ad proofread by computer
Posted 03/01/2000 by David Grabiner
 

>From a local computer store ad:

Free Ram Installation

with purchase of any ram.

My computer has a mouse, but I can't figure out how to install a ram in it.

I think this ad was proofread only by the printer's computer, and not by anyone who worked at the store.

Why won't my printer work?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I support about 100 users in my office. A supervisor appeared at my desk, obviously exasperated. "My printer won't print. I've rebooted twice and it still won't work."

Okay, I say, let's go take a look. As we walked to his department, I asked the usual questions... were you able to print earlier today? (Yes.) Did anything unusual happen right before you lost printing capability? (No, nothing.)

We got to his desk and the first thing I noticed was the power light on the printer wasn't on. Are you sure nothing unusual happened?

"Well, I accidentally kicked the power cord out of the wall, but I plugged everything back in!" he insisted.

And indeed he had...

The CPU was plugged into the wall.

The monitor was plugged into the wall.

The printer was plugged into the surge protector.

The surge protector was plugged into... itself.

Not sure if he thought the surge protector was a mini generator or what. I plugged the surge protector into the wall and, magically, the printer started working. (I was on the verge of laughing, so I returned to move the CPU and monitor plugs back to the surge protector after he left for the day.)

His comment was, "I just don't understand how all this technical stuff works."

Indeed.

(I got a call from the same user a week later... the printer wouldn't work again. This time it was out of paper. At least this time he realized how goofy he was. It's SO hard not to laugh at people sometimes!)

Helpful sales people
Posted 03/01/2000 by John Arnold
 

An older gentleman was was buying some 8mm video tapes at our local Radio Shack. He also had an 8mm movie camera laying on the counter. I asked the guy if he was buying the video tapes for his camera. He said that the sales person helped him and that they would work. I told him that video tapes would not work in his movie camera. The customer was confused and sales person was not happy with me (messing up his sale, I guess). After I explained the difference between video and film, the customer left with out buying anything. I guess since they were both 8mm it should have worked!

The New Morphing Video Card
Posted 03/01/2000 by Derek
 

Actual e-mail. The names have been changed to protect the intellectually inferior.

After several e-mail exchanges I suggested that this user try our video card in another computer (one that was better than the cheap piece of garbage they had)to see how it responded during boot. This was the latest response:

"I just checked and the other computer doesn't have an AGP slot. The video has to be a PCI card. Is there a jumper or setting that I can set to change your video card from AGP to PCI?"

Old style message sending
Posted 03/01/2000 by Mad IT Guru
 

There was i time when I worked on contract for a IT services company who had a contract to support all of British Home Office. This was the time before internet email was the big time and everything was passed through internal gateways up and down the country.

There was a day when many of these gateways were very bunged up with very large attachment and ultimatly crashed most of the email gateways across the country, thus disabling any mail getting from London to Liverpool for example.

Obviously we started getting calls left right & centre but this one stands out the most.

This was a lady who was secretary to one of the top dogs of the British Government who was desperate to get a message through to the north. Something about imigrants or sommit?

It was imperetive that this got through.

Asking about what client software she was using and they way it was set up ( you know the story, try to take them round the block a few times just to sound good )

I then explained about the gateways in idiot terms and mentioned to her that she would be better using CARRIER PIGEON rather that waiting for the gateways to come back up

I then got a reply to that remark.

"Where will I find that? in the options perhaps?"

This is the secretary to one of the cream of the British Government. How is it that our taxes are paying her wages!!!!

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Simon Lindner
 

MY favorite piece of Tech humor I first heard while working

for a scanner manufacturer.

When one of the tech's would receive an irritating call on

a low tolerance day, the tech would inform the caller that

he had an ID-TEN-T error and then gave the caller the

fixing instructions. If you write ID-TEN-T numerically,

the error became apparent. ID10T error.

It's not just them.....
Posted 03/01/2000 by tracker
 

Before starting my current job in tech support, I was an emergency dispatcher for 13 years. The area I worked in....well, let's just say it was rife with M******ft employees as well as other computer-related folks. These are just a few of the questions we would get (on 911 no less...you know, the EMERGENCY number!!!):

1. "How do I cook a turkey?" - yes, we got this one several times around the holidays from panicked folks cooking the family holiday meal for the first time.

2. There's a oppossum in my yard!" - well, yes, we're more used to seeing them flat in the street, but they do wander about occassionally. They've never been known to go for the throat, they just look like big, ugly rats.

3. "There's a deer/raccoon/squirrel/bear/what-have-you in my yard/neighborhood!!!" - well, yeah, they were here first. You need to learn how to share!

4. "Can I drive in the 2-person carpool (HOV) lane if I a) am pregnant b) am driving a hearse with a stiff in the back?" - that would be a "no" to both of those. It ain't breathing on it's own, it don't count.

5. "I want to report someone doing 60 (the speed limit) in the 'fast lane' (left lane)" - sorry, but all the lanes carry the same speed. They're allowed to do that unless it's a posted passing lane.

6. "...." - Sorry, can't really imitate it, but it's a very small (like 2 year old) child attempting to report an emergency (a *real* one, like a major accident), because mom or dad thought it would be a good way for the little one to learn to use 911. "Hi...is your Mommy or Daddy there? Can I talk to them? I need to rip them a new....." You get the idea.

7. "I wanna report a drunk driver. It's my best friend/wife/husband/child. He/she left an hour ago. He/she shouldn't have been driving." - well, let's see. At normal speeds, with an hour's worth of driving, he could be.....well, most anywhere! And what the h*** did you let him drive for in the first place!!!! (And yes, I know the answer to that..."I didn't want him to be mad at me"!!!)

Well, that's enough, but you get the idea. You may think the questions you get from the users are inane, but I've heard as bad or worse stuff from folks doing the same job you (and now I) do! :)

After all, they're not in alphabetical order...
Posted 03/01/2000 by Regina
 

This exchange happened through a series of e-mails.

User: The shortcut keys in Microsoft Word aren't working right. I press Ctrl + "i" and it opens a document instead of italicizing. Other Windows shortcut commands are not working correctly either.

Me: Have you reassigned the shortcut keys or enabled Wordperfect shortcut keys?

User: No. I've not made any changes to my settings, and it worked fine yesterday.

Me: Is this happening in other Windows programs also?

User: Yes. The same thing is happening in Excel.

Me: Have you changed the keyboard settings in the Control Panel?

User: No, not that I know of.

Me (scratching my head): Let me think about it for a while.

A little while later the user e-mails me: By the way, this morning I had gotten some lotion on some of the keyboard keys and I took them off to clean them. I'm not sure if I put them back in the right order. Would that make a difference?

Line Out?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Stuart Kaptein
 

I work for the largest ISP in South Africa, so I get some real classics, but this one really got me.

A lady phones in and the first thing out of her mouth is " Is there some thing wrong with your network?.. there always seems to be some thing wrong with your network. I think its a disgrace!". I check the modem, I check the dialer, etc... After 25 min troubleshooting her problem, she says "Oh, I don't know if this matters, but the telephone line that I use for the modem has been suspended by the telephone company for a few days, it souldn't make a difference should it?..." nuf said

Help The HelpDesk
Posted 03/01/2000 by Patrick Post
 

There was a lull in calls to the HelpDesk and a chance to check personal e-mail had arisen. A rather experienced Tech Support staff member attempted to answer the mail that had arrived in her Outlook mailbox...

Before doing so she paused for a moment and turned to the other five Tech Support Staff members and asked:-

How to I reply to everyone (In Outlook)

In unison the reply from the rest of the staff members was:-

"REPLY TO ALL!!!"

Her face turned Ultra Violet when she realised she had done this a million times before and had assisted a million others to do this as well...

He doesn't know how!
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for my ISP and we also do computer hardware work. Well this one particular lady has called in MANY times since I started to work there. When I first got the pleasure of speaking to her I answered one of the sipmlest questions known to man -- "Where is the 'any' key" -- After a slight grin and the explanation she seemed very content and after saying good-bye's we hung up.

A few days later she calls back again and wants to know how to set up her dialup connection on an old Win3.11 box... well I don't know the first thing about Win3.11 so I told her to hold on while I transferred her to a different tech. She told me that she did not want to speak to anyone else that I was the only one who could fix her computer. I tried to talk to her and explain to her that I was not the only tech there that could help her with her problem. I finally just transferred her over and then when another tech answered, she hung up.

She came in the next week and wanted to see me. She had tried to upgrade her 486 DX computer to Windows95 but got stuck. She basically wanted to wait there while I fixed it. She said that she needed it back by the end of the day. -- I told her that I couldn't work on it because of another project that I was doing so it would be 1-2 days before I could get to it. She would NOT let ANYONE Else work on her computer.

I told her that I could start on it in about an hour and so she finally left.

After she left I got one of the other techs to fix the machine while I finished up my project.. After he fixed the machine and she came back in to get it, I explained what "I" did and she left. Havn't talked to her since.

Training
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

I work for a telephone company as a network engineer. Last week I received a promotion, so I had to train a new person to fill my old position. I had nothing to do with her hiring but I did see her resume and it seemed impressive. She had almost 10 years in internet and data network support. On the morning of her second day, a co-worker and I walked in her office to ask if she had any questions so far. She said "yes, my computer is locked up. It is at the same screen it was at last night when I shut down."

I responded "We are having problems with Novell and sometimes when you do a shut down it hangs, but it's no big deal. Just turn off the computer and reboot."

She told me she had tried rebooting several times, but it is still hanging at the same screen. I told her I had never had that happen before, and asked her to reboot now so I can look to see if an error message comes up. She said ok, and proceeded to turn her monitor on and off and said "See!!! It's not rebooting!!!" I had to leave, run down the hall into the bathroom before dying of laughter. I left my co-worker to try to explain to her to try the button on the big box next to her desk. Since then, every day of training has been a new adventure.

Ignorance comes in many guises
Posted 03/01/2000 by tracker
 

Just another reminder to all those who get a tad smug about their knowledge and other's lack thereof, my Dad did a bit of tech support the other day for a neighbor. Neighbor is new to the area, fresh from the city. High tech all the way from the newest computer system on the market to every consumer telecommunications gadget known to man. He called my Dad because, in his efforts to fit into the rural life, he had just purchased a cow. A "freshened" cow. For those of you not of the rural life, a cow in need of being milked twice a day. He needed to find out how to milk her. As my Dad said, "What an idiot! Doesn't EVERYBODY know how to do that???!!?"

Just remember folks, as Will Rogers said, "Everybody is ignorant; just on different subjects."

Blank Word Document
Posted 03/01/2000 by Jess
 

This one happened to me today at work, I thought it was amusing enough to share:

One of my friends at work, who is usually fairly computer literate, emailed me and asked me to send her a blank word document. Ok, I figured she was just playing with something so I sent her one but in the process asked her what she was doing. The response she came back with was that she didn't have word on that computer but needed to compose a document!! I had to break it to her that it just doesn't work that way....

Pingable
Posted 03/01/2000 by K.B.
 

I'm a technical support representative for a large US cable internet service provider and the following call took me totally by surprise.

I recieved a call from a gentleman who was complaining that he could not get a cannection to the internet. I walked him through all of his settings (TCP/IP, Proxy, etc). All of his settings seemed to be correct and his modem was fine. There were no service interuptions in his area and there fore was kind of boggled as to why he couldn't get a connection. As a last check I pinged his modem, computer, and gateway. All three pings "Timed Out" so I told the client that I was unable to ping his GATEWAY. With this the client responded "You can't ping my GATEWAY because I own a DELL!!! Obviously I had to hit the mute button on my phone!! Once I re-composed myself I returned to the client and eventually solved his problem (but not befor a good laugh!!)

No Title
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

Me: Tech Support, how may I help you?

Caller: Yes, I'm on the internet and I can't do it!

Could they have been any more vague?

Heavy computer
Posted 03/01/2000 by Per
 

I got a call from a user. Her problem was that she got "signal error" when she try to start her computer. I went down to her and saw that the computer was gone. The week before I installed a new laptop computer in her office so i asked where the it was.

- "It's there she said and pointed at the desk."

No sign of the computer. so I asked her again. She pointed at the desk again.

- "Show me how you do so that I can see." I said

She went to the desk and pushed the power buttom on the monitor. And "signal error" appeared on the screen.

At this point I understod her problem. On her desk she had the computers dockstation(I don't know if it the right english word for it.)but no computer in it. So I informed her that she had forgot to put her computer in the dockstation. She replied:

- Ooh, You mean that heavy thing that left at home. Do you really mean that I have to carry it to work every day?

Move the Computer?
Posted 03/01/2000 by Ian WIlkinson
 

I'm not in tech support myself, but while I was in one of the Computer labs at university, someone who had obviously never used a computer before came in.

He sat down and quite quickly started using the computer, but after a minute or two of using the mouse he ran out of mouse mat, he continued using the desk until it next hit the computer. At this point, instead of lifting the mouse up and placing it in the centre of the mouse mat, he just pushed the computer along the desk and continued using the mouse.

This continued for about 20 minutes, with him pushing the computer along, until I he reached the wall. I decided this would be a good time to tell him how to use the mouse...

Where is http://www.ieaust.org.au/government
Posted 03/01/2000 by Anonymous Tech Supporter
 

We ran in to an interesting problem the other day. An email was sent to the helpdesk from a user who was very angry that when he clicked the search button in Internet Explorer the search engine was:

a) Different from the one at home

b) Only came up with Microsoft information

c) He typed http://www.ieaust.org.au/government in to it and it couldn't find it!

We are now doing an idiots guide for all our staff, some of us feel that an idiots guide will be above their heads.

Stupid Smarts
Posted 03/01/2000 by mothballd
 

Several years ago while I was still in high school I was taking a CADD class. The instructor was definately one of the few things that my school had going for it, he was pretty cool and very smart. PC Networking, programming, CADD, blah blah blah, he knew what to do. Unfortunately, he had a couple real dumbasses in his classes. One of them, (who I'll call 'Scott') 'Scott' was always trying to show off and impress people- like going up to people's computers and hitting the power switch. Needless to say, he got in a lot of fights and didn't win a one, he never stopped though.

And once upon a time, Scott decided to show his fellow students just how 'smart' he is. So he put in his Novel user login on the CADD Lab network, logged onto the internet, (the school has a T3 connection to the Inet so logging onto the internet is really just a matter of opening internet explorer) accessed a government website and in front of a half dozen witnesses who REALLY didn't like him hacked into the site... Guess how much trouble the FBI had tracking him down?

The little bastard finally got what he deserved....ehh... maybe he didn't deserve everything he got, but I do enjoy flaunting the fact that I can touch a computer without getting arrested and he can't... ever....hehe.

Wheres' the mouse?
Posted 03/01/2000 by mothballd
 

Sister is a Mac only kinda person. Her mac had to be taken to the shop. She had an urgent report to type up so I let her use my Compaq laptop. We usually have a kensington trackball hooked up to it to avoid using the obnoxious fingerpad built into it. Well, I forgot to plug that in for her. I haven't bothered to register the copy of Office 2000 (its my backup copy :) I have on the laptop so the registration dialogs still pop up when you start Microsoft Word. Sis' was getting pretty frustrated that she couldn't close these dialogs becuase I hadn't hooked up the trackball!

It took me a couple minutes to show her that the little grey square below the keyboard was actually a 'mouse'. She was rather surprised when she learned that she could also press the escape key to bypass dialogs...

Family, oh.. the joy.

Customer Problem Report Form
Posted 03/01/2000 by David
 

This is not a tale. Just soemthing that all techs might find useful. Computer Problem Report Form

1. Describe your problem :

2. Now, describe the problem accurately :

3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem :

4. Problem Severity:

A. Minor __

B. Minor __

C. Minor __

D. Trivial __

5. Nature of the problem:

A. Locked Up __

B. Frozen __

C. Hung __

D. Strange Smell __

6. Is your computer plugged in? Yes __ No __

7. Is it turned on? Yes __ No __

8. Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes __ No __

9. Have you made it worse? Yes __

10. Have you had a friend who knows all about computers try

to fix it for you?

Yes __ No __

11. Did they make it even worse? Yes __

12. Have you read the manual? Yes __ No __

13. Are you sure you've read the manual? Maybe __ No __

14. Are you absolutely certain you've read the manual? No__

15. If you read the manual, do you think you understood it?

Yes __ No__

16. If Yes, then explain why you can't fix the problem

yourself.

17. What were you doing with your computer at the time the

problem occurred?

l8. If you answered "nothing," then explain why you were

logged in?

l9. Are you sure you aren't imagining the problem? Yes __

No __

20. Does the clock on your home VCR blink 12:00?

Yes __

What's a VCR? __

21. Do you have a copy of "PCs for Dummies?" Yes __ No __

22. Do you have any independent witnesses to the problem?

Yes __ No __

23. Do you have any electronics products that DO work?

Yes__ No__

24. Is there anyone else you could blame this problem on?

Yes __ No __

25. Have you given the machine a good whack on the top? Yes

__ No __

26. Is the machine on fire? Yes __ Not Yet __

27. Can you do something else instead of bothering me? Yes

Tales From Technical Support Index

Tales from the Techs
March 2000
  1. No Title

  2. How not to describe a pc

  3. IFORGET is the password

  4. Telecommunting

  5. modem doesn't connect

  6. Computers and cholesterol!

  7. Good salesman

  8. A Drink Anyone?

  9. If only this were a real error message and other interesting tales

  10. Word Autocorrect.

  11. Where am I at?

  12. Start Menu Blues

  13. im so dumb

  14. The right idea, but...

  15. Get rid of S-E-X !

  16. Going Going Gone

  17. Strange sound

  18. System Security????

  19. ISSUES

  20. Porn on the PC

  21. Modems are for everything!

  22. Can you hear me?

  23. Copier vs. Degauss

  24. No Title

  25. 3 stories from Sweden

  26. MCP? - Not impressed...

  27. Hey, then I've got four lines!

  28. PaperLess Printer

  29. Fix the net!

  30. Mouse Lube

  31. Stupidity ...

  32. Tech Nightmares

  33. Video Madness

  34. HTTP 404

  35. type errors

  36. IT Idiots...

  37. Experience comes with age

  38. No Title

  39. Macguyver

  40. Fatal errors, stop that!

  41. But my tv works just fine

  42. I cant handle technical things

  43. missing keys

  44. "You wanna What?!"

  45. "OOPS!"

  46. DoH!

  47. Rasputin

  48. Cord less internal modem?

  49. You Have What???

  50. Problems 30,000 feet in the air

  51. Computers tease dogs

  52. Oh I forgot to tell you...

  53. No Title

  54. No Title

  55. The Start Bar's Gone!

  56. Writable ROM?

  57. The most annoying Question

  58. Punch Card Problems

  59. To Simple to Think

  60. Important Spam.. Or How I lost my messages

  61. Modem Volume

  62. No Title

  63. "ANY" key missing from the keyboard

  64. Short Tales

  65. Keyboard? What's that?

  66. Monitor acting funny...

  67. Field Service Manager.

  68. No Title

  69. Is that your computer makeing that noise?......

  70. End-User, spelled i-d-1-0-t (all lowercase, of course)

  71. Run, zip! See zip run.

  72. No Title

  73. My modem sounds like I kicked the pig

  74. Elusive "Start" Button

  75. Is the slash forward or backwards?

  76. No Title

  77. Expert?

  78. No Title

  79. Computer ad proofread by computer

  80. Why won't my printer work?

  81. Helpful sales people

  82. The New Morphing Video Card

  83. Old style message sending

  84. No Title

  85. It's not just them.....

  86. After all, they're not in alphabetical order...

  87. Line Out?

  88. Help The HelpDesk

  89. He doesn't know how!

  90. Training

  91. Ignorance comes in many guises

  92. Blank Word Document

  93. Pingable

  94. No Title

  95. Heavy computer

  96. Move the Computer?

  97. Where is http://www.ieaust.org.au/government

  98. Stupid Smarts

  99. Wheres' the mouse?

  100. Customer Problem Report Form

Past Tales from the Techs:
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